Bizarro FAQs

Bizarro isn't really a new genre. Just a new term. For decades, people have been going into bookstores and video stores looking for the weird stuff. To them, "weird stuff" is a genre, just like horror or science fiction. But it has never been given an official name before. Until now.

What makes a book or film Bizarro?

Basically, if an audience enjoys a book or film primarily because of its weirdness, then it is Bizarro. Weirdness might not be the work's only appealing quality, but it is the major one.

Isn't this stuff just weird for the sake of weird?

The comment "weird for the sake of weird" is just empty rhetoric used to devalue work of this kind. Would you say punk bands are punk for the sake of punk? Or does Stephen King write horror for the sake of horror? Bizarro is a genre of the weird so it is weird. Sure, there might be some authors who puke blobs of nonsensical words onto paper and call it weird. But that's not Bizarro, that's just bad writing.

Are there any subgenres of Bizarro?

Bizarro encompasses a limitless number of styles and subgenres. From irreal westerns to romantic absurdism to surreal splatterpunk to post-apocalyptic avant-garde crime noir porn. There's a wide range of possibilities.

It's all about the audience. A lot of people love this type of work but have difficulty finding it. They don't even know what to call it. Well, by creating the Bizarro genre this just makes it easier for readers to find Bizarro books and films. It also makes marketing to the Bizarro audience a bit easier.

Where can I buy Bizarro books?

Due to the underground anti-mainstream nature of the books, you'll most likely have to buy them through online retailers such as amazon.com or special order them through your local bookstore. Some of the more popular Bizarro titles are available in select stores.

If you have any other questions you feel should be added to this list email Rose O'Keefe at publisher@eraserheadpress.com

If Bizarro is more than a quality (which I think and hope it is), and is rather an emerging literary movement, shouldn't it be capable of definition?
"Weirdness" is a quality belonging to any work, really. Gravity's Rainbow is weird but is not Bizarro. As different authors
participate in themes, concepts, literary devices, etc. typical of the Bizarro genre, they would probably be reluctant to consider themselves among the rank
and file of say Aylett, Mellick, or Harlan Wilson. The Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Oulipo members, the New York School, postcolonialists, and other
movements in English literature express and describe cultural phenomena specific in origin and aim. Who is the subculture to which Bizarro refers? What does
one's dedication to The Weird mean spiritually, emotionally, metaphysically? If Bizarro has been around for so long, why is it marginalized by mainstream
publishers today? Does Bizarro have some kind of validating philosophy, as say, Dada and Surrealism did on the Beats? Do we live in Bizarro Times?.... If
these questions do not have answers, Bizarro isn't a movement or a genre. Instead, it's just a passing fad that never really takes hold or is simply a
quality like "campy," "grotesque" or..."weird."

The FAQ doesn't define Bizarro as an emerging literary movement, but rather as a genre -- which is an entirely different thing. Genre is essentially defined by audience expectations, and to a large extent by the pleasure the audience takes in the work. This is why genres have conventions -- these conventions are the avenues by which the pleasures of that genre are experienced by the audience for the work. Genre makes work legible in a certain way, but it specifically makes legible the way the work is supposed to be enjoyed.

It may also be a literary movement, but that would mean it is defined by the artists making work, by their shared intentions, methods, or effects -- and usually by some shared sense of identity, even if they reject whatever label is placed upon them, they share some sense of connection with each other and with each other's work.

I am not particularly knowledgeable about bizarro fiction, as I am new to this forum, but based on what I see here, I am a major aficionado of bizarro film -- I just didn't have a name for it yet. For me the genre is not only defined by its weirdness, but also on the context of that weirdness. Here is a list of characteristics which might not define, but cluster around the genre:

1. The weirdness is not a stand-out element of the work, but rather the work takes place in a fundamentally weird universe. This is an important distinction because I believe that the absurdity of bizarro work is in response to an increasingly bizarre world. Walking through a 99 cent store is about as weird, or as bizarro, as you can get, but the contradictory products on sale all for one dollar is a product of a complex system that functions according to its own weird rules, i.e. globalized manufacturing economics.

2. Density of image combined with a fragmented or otherwise problematized narrative. Contradictory, absurd, overdetermined, or shocking/violent images often seem to interrupt or complicate the narrative. The story is not told about weird subject matter, the story is barely able to be told because the weirdness infects the narrative process.

3. Cynicism or lack of faith in a mainstream narrative. This is I think important based on the two points above -- the world is essentially deeply irrational, which is being represented, and because the world is so irrational, no coherent narrative can be trusted.

4. The above criteria are frequently reached via exploitation of genre, especially marginal genres such as horror, sci-fi, or westerns. Genre expectations make a great foil for a narrative that is being interrupted and broken. And the combination of pop sensibility and violent subject matter common to pulp genres suits the dense imagery of bizarro like hand in bloody glove.

5. Literary allusions or techniques combined with a pop sensibility. Genre defining bizarro artists like David Lynch, William Burroughs, and Alexander Jodorowsky show this in force -- the "high" literary methods or effects are not opposed to the pop sensibility, but rather served by it. Pop culture becomes the raw material from which the masterpiece is formed.

These are my thoughts as I'm getting to know this genre or emerging literary movement, if it is in fact either. And the exciting part is now I have a bunch of reading to do. Anyone want to create a recommended reading/viewing list?